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MEMORIAL 



JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 




\tL XtlI ff]z<'(L , 



MEMORIAL 



JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 



FROM THE 



CITY OF BOSTON 



'Come, workers, here was a teacher, and the lesson lie taught was good; 
There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood." 

John Boyle O'Reilly 



SECOND EDITION 



V 




BOSTON 
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE COMMON COUNCIL 

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fb ' $ 



PRESS OF 

3S. a c fe Sxr c 1 1 a n D UCijuicljiU 

BOSTON 



CITY OF BOSTON. 



In Common Council, January 1, 1891. 

Ordered, — That the Superintendent of Printing he and hereby is ordered 
to have printed and distributed pro rata among members of the Common 
Council of 1890, fifteen hundred copies of the Memorial of John Boyle 
O'Heili.y ; the expense thereof to he charged to the Common Council 
Contingent Fund. 

Passed in Common Council, January 1, 1891. 

Approved by the Mayor, January 3, 1891. 

A true copy. 

Attest: JOSEPH O'KANE, 

Clerk of the Common Council. 



DEATH OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 



DEATH OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 



John Boyle O'Reilly, the Irish patriot, the poet, and 
humanity's friend, as he may be styled, passed away suddenly 
at his summer residence in the town of Hull, Mass., on the 
morning of August 10, 1890. 

Seldom has a death occurred in our midst that has more 
strongly affected our citizens and the community at large, or 
has excited such wide-spread interest and sympathy, as that of 
John Boyle O'Reilly. 

Although not a public man in the commonly received sense 
of the term, he had by his fine character, his brilliant literary 
talents, and his romantic history made for himself innumerable 
friends and admirers, and achieved a fame of which any man 
might well be proud. 

His sudden death, without the premonition of disease or 
serious illness, had, as has been stated, a very marked effect 
upon the community, and was made the occasion of an expres- 
sion of sorrow and regret, which for its unanimity and extent 
was wonderful and almost unprecedented. Societies and asso- 
ciations, the press, and all classes, without distinction of sect 
or creed, united in testifying to the worth and nobility of 
character of the dead patriot and poet, and to the extent of the 
loss which his death had occasioned. 

Acting in accord with the sentiment so widely expressed, 
His Honor Mayor Hart and a large number of our leading 



12 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

citizens made arrangements for a meeting at Tremont Temple, 
to take place on the second of September, where an oppor- 
tunity might be afforded for a public eulogy of the deceased, 
and definite steps might be taken to establish a lasting 
memorial of his life and character. 



MEETING IN TREiWONT TEMPLE. 



MEETING IN TREMONT TEMPLE. 



The request received by His Honor the Mayor to call a 
meeting of citizens in Tremont Temple was in the following- 
form : — 

Hon. Thomas N. Hart, Mayor: — 

The undersigned respectfully request you to call 
a meeting of the citizens of Boston, to take appropri- 
ate action upon the death of our late fellow-citizen, 
John Boyle O'Reilly. 

CHARLES H. TAYLOR, FRANCIS A. WALKER, 

JOHN H. HOLMES, PATRICK DONAHOE, 

' PATRICK A. COLLINS, ROBERT F. CLARK, 

JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE, CHARLES F. DONNELLY, 

ROBERT GRANT, ASA P. POTTER, 

THOMAS B. FITZ. 

Boston, August 21, 1890. 

In response to the foregoing request His Honor the Mayor 
issued the following call : — 

The citizens of Boston are requested to meet in 
Tremont Temple on Tuesday evening, September 2, 



16 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

1890, at eight o'clock, to give expression to the loss 

sustained by all our people in the death of John 

Boyle O'Reilly, and to take appropriate action 

thereon. 

THOMAS N. HART. 

August 22, 1890. 

At the appointed hour for the meeting an immense crowd 
had gathered in front of Tremont Temple. 

They were the Irish-American and the Anglo-American and 
the Afric-American, in short, the people, — the people whom 
John Boyle O'Reilly had loved and loyally served, — and 
they were gathered together to do honor to John Boyle 
O'Reilly's memory. 

It was an eager, but a patient and good-tempered multitude, 
and once the doors were opened, it flowed in almost noise- 
lessly, mounting from the floor to the very last rows of the 
upper gallery, like a high tide. 

Meantime, the guests invited to the platform had taken their 
places, and when Mayor Hart, Chairman Charles Levi Wood- 
bury, and the other speakers appeared, there was not a vacant 
place in tbe vast auditorium. 

The guests included the rectors of all the city churches, and 
many priests, personal friends of Mr. O'Reilly, from out of 
town. There were also the presidents of the Charitable Irish 
Society, the St. Botolph Club, the Papyrus Club, the Catholic 
Union, the Athletic Club, many prominent State and City 
officials and representative citizens of every ancestry and creed. 

Over the platform was a fine crayon portrait of John Boyle 
O'Reilly, flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the Irish flag. 

Mayor Hart, who was received with hearty and prolonged 
applause, called the meeting to order as follows : — 



MEETING IN" TKEMONT TEMPLE. 17 



MAYOR HART'S ADDRESS. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: We are met to honor all 
that was good and true and brave in John Boyle 
O'Reilly. When asked to call this public meeting for 
such a purpose, your Mayor could not but entertain the 
wish of so many citizens. 

Mr. O'Reilly illustrated, I think, the principle of true 
Americanism: he stood for equality. 

Personally, he has been thought rash. I have not 
always agreed with him, but his integrity has never 
been doubted; and the people, who do not confide 
easily, confided in him, because he truly believed what 
he sang in the most splendid of all his poems, at Ply- 
mouth, that 

" The people may be trusted with their own." 

It is easy to stand for equal rights when we are not 
to be the losers. John Boyle O'Reilly stood up for 
equal rights when he had reached a high station and 
wealth. In the height of his power he proclaimed the 
good American doctrine that 

" There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood; 
There are no creeds to be outlawed, no colors of skin debarred ; 
Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs, — one right, one hope, one 

guard , — 
The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard against 

selfish greed." 

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the presiding 
officer of this meeting. 



18 MEMORIAL OF JOHN" BOYLE O'REILLY. 

Mayor Hart then gracefully introduced the Chairman of the 
evening, Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury. 



REMARKS OF HON. CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY. 

It is apparent in the faces of all before me, the 
spontaneous feeling of the heart that has called to- 
gether this assemblage to-night in these vast numbers 
to pay a tribute of our respect and a token of our af- 
fection and esteem for the great and good man whose 
untimely death we deplore. For twenty years he has 
been among us, one of us, toiling in his daily toil, re- 
joicing in his -hours of festivity and mirth, attending 
to all the duties of a citizen, and all' the duties of a 
man. We knew, we felt him, and he grew to what he 
was amidst us ; we saw the whole of it, and we recog- 
nized the brightness of his career, the fulness of his 
mind, and the lofty heights to which he reached. I 
would speak to you particularly of him as a citizen of 
the United States. He came here, and his first step 
upon landing on these shores was to embrace the 
opportunity of becoming a naturalized citizen. The 
principles of our Constitution, and the principles 
which mark our social life, the freedom, the order, 
the method, the rewards of industry, all broke upon 
his mind, and cheered and enchanted him with 
American institutions. 

Had he been George Washington, Sam Adams, or 
John Hancock, he could not have loved more the in- 



MEETING IN TKEMONT TEMPLE. 19 

stitutions of America than these great statesmen loved 
that which they had created and which they saw 
around them. We feel so much for him as a citi- 
zen that Ave almost forget he was born in another 
clime. He assimilated himself so perfectly amongst 
us that we hardly turned to remember that he came 
to us an exile, a fugitive, a man whom the oppressors 
of Great Britain had tried to brand as a felon, and 
to put the mark of ignominy upon him, because he 
was a patriot and loved his people. 

The same spirit which actuated Sam Adams and 
John Hancock and all our great revolutionary sires 
when they rose to arms, burned within his breast, 
when, as a boy, he threw his life, his fortune, and his 
future into the cause of Ireland. They succeeded, and 
he failed, but was not crushed. I am reminded, too, 
of a marked and striking similarity between him and 
Lafayette. Lafayette threw his young sword and his 
boyhood, here, into the cause of liberty; O'Reilly did 
the same, not in Ireland, but for the liberty of Ireland. 

Lafayette, in his struggle for the liberty of France, 
was captured and made a prisoner, and an effort was 
made to crush out his young life and to crush out lib- 
erty with him. Boyle O'Reilly, under similar circum- 
stances, was made a prisoner in Australia for the 
same effort and the same purpose. Both escaped 
from prison, and I am proud to say that both owed 
to America the effort and organization that enabled 
them to escape. O'Reilly had a frank and genial 



20 MEMORIAL OF JOHK BOYLE O'REILLY. 

manner. He was true and loyal, tried and true al- 
ways, and people learned to love him, — not only a 
class, but all classes. The rough and the polished, 
the poor and the rich, the Irishman and the Ameri- 
can, all warmed to Boyle O'Reilly, and their hearts 
cling to him. It may be said that here, in free 
America, he founded an empire of love, an empire 
where no taxes were levied, where no offices were 
distributed, where no honors were scattered. 

Among those who have lived for humanity, who 
have lived for their country, who have lived for their 
people, who have lived for their religious creed and 
their friendships, whose broad humane hearts have 
been able to tolerate distinctions and difference of 
politics and creed, so long as they were honest and 
not offensive, the personality of John Boyle O'Reilly 
will stand prominent from generation to generation; 
and, as time passes away, the same halo, the same 
reverence which is accorded to our revolutionary sires, 
who threw off the yoke, will be given to the name of 
John Boyle O'Reilly. God grant that it may be men- 
tioned beneath the free flag of Ireland, by the free 
voices of her native citizens. I came here to-night 
to preside at your meeting, not to address you; there 
are those who know him more intimately, who have 
been thrown, perhaps, more intimately with him than 
I have, who can speak to you of him in closer and 
warmer and dearer terms, though I yield to none of 
them in my friendship for the deceased. 



MEETING IN TREMONT TEMPLE. 21 

REMARKS OF THE VERY REV. WILLIAM BYRNE, D.D., V.G. 

This immense assembly, filling this spacious temple, 
is itself a proof that we have come together to do 
honor to the memory of an extraordinary man. The 
man is John Boyle O'Reilly, whose untimely death 
we mourn, and whose departure is a loss to Ireland 
and America, and to humanity. 

John Boyle O'Reilly was a many-sided person- 
age. His character presented many phases to the 
public eye. A natural humanitarian, he was a 
Christian philanthropist. He was an Irish patriot 
and an American citizen. He was a true poet and 
an instructive public lecturer, a successful journalist 
and a patron of art, and an authority in athletic- 
games. 

"While it is my privilege to allude to these various 
attributes of the departed, it is my duty to leave the 
treatment of them in detail to the speakers that are to 
follow me. Representing the Catholic clergy of this 
city, I will confine myself to an estimate of the man 
and his services to the Catholic Church. These 
services were many and very great, but to fully 
appreciate them we must call to mind some of his 
personal characteristics, for his most valuable services 
were the result of the influence these gave him. His 
abilities were as varied as his career was chequered 
and romantic. The halo of martyrdom in the cause 
of popular liberty was about his head. His engaging 



22 MEMORIAL OE JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

personality, genial soul, and mental alertness won for 
him hosts of friends in all ranks of society. He was 
an original thinker, and a deep student of everything 
that had a bearing on human life and happiness. To 
converse with him was not merely an intellectual treat, 
it was an invigorating mental tonic. It stimulated 
thought and suggested new ideas ; it put one on his 
mettle to follow where he led, and to keep pace with 
the rapid movement of his mind. 

He was at home with all sorts of men, and had 
bright ideas on diverse subjects. He discussed meta- 
physics with Harvard professors, art and literature 
with a Holmes, a Hosmer, or a Higginson, social 
problems with Wendell Phillips, ecclesiastical polity 
with priests and bishops, and the value of hereditary 
traits and aptitudes with the Adamses, Winthrops, 
Saltonstalls, Shattucks, and Woodburys. 

He was something of a philosophic statesman, but 
very little of a politician. 

And yet his popularity was so great, that had he 
chosen to accept public office, he could have aimed 
high with success, without the aid of the arts of 
practical politics. He would no more deign to flatter 
the populace than to cringe to power, or fawn upon 
tyrants. It was a privilege to know John Boyle 
O'Reilly, and an honor to be counted among his 
friends. 

Without any credentials save his own genius and 
sterling character, he rapidly won his way to universal 



MEETING ENT TREMONT TEMPLE. 23 

recognition in this city. His fame as a poet soon 
became national, and finally coextensive with the 
domain of the English language. He made friends 
without conscious effort, and often without even in- 
tending it. 

His domestic life developed the more tender qualities 
of his nature and the deeper emotions of the heart. 
He was a devoted husband and a model father of a 
family. It was my privilege to know intimately the 
domestic side of his life, because I was for years his 
pastor. Apart from this fact, there were certain 
natural reasons why we took kindly to each other. 

We were both Irishmen in a strange land, — he an 
exile perforce, I an emigrant, seemingly of my own 
free will, but really driven from home by the results 
of landlord exaction and bad laws. "We were both 
born about the same time and in the same county, 
almost in the same parish, in full view of the royal 
hill of Tara, beside the historic River Boyne, whose 
banks are studded with the monuments of Ireland's 
golden age of nationhood and religion. The crumbling 
castle of Irish chieftain or Saxon lord, the Danish rath, 
the round tower, the huge Celtic stone cross, the ivy- 
mantled ruins of church and cloister, school and abbey, 
are found in its vicinity. The daily contemplation of 
these historic scenes awakened in us common senti- 
ments of patriotism and religion. From our doors 
we could see the croppies' mound, the grave of the 
men who died for Ireland in '98, and the Hill of Slane 



24 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

on which St. Patrick lighted that Easter fire that 
proved the morning star of Christianity to Ireland. 

When we were boys the patriotic fervor aroused in 
men's minds by the O'Connell agitation had not so far 
lost its force as to leave no impress on our youthful 
souls. Our patriotic enthusiasm was aroused even in 
our school days, by reading the history of our country 
and the speeches and writings of the leaders of the 
Young Ireland Party, Gavan Duffy, Smith O'Brien, 
and Thomas Francis Meagher. 

Our youthful imagination was fed with the poetic 
fire of Tom Moore, Davis, Mangan, and Speranza. 
The political ferment and upheaval of 1848, coming to 
us as a recent history, was not without its influence. 
In 1853 we were old enough to take an intelligent 
interest in the Tenant Right League, so ably con- 
ducted by Gavan Duffy, Sherman Crawford, and 
Frederic Lucas, and so wofully wrecked by the treach- 
ery of Sadlier and Keough. On the failure of the Ten- 
ant Eight movement, I left Ireland, but John Boyle 
O'Reilly became a leading spirit in the futile effort 
of the Fenians to wrest from England by force what 
she refused to yield to persuasion. In this Fenian 
episode, his fiery zeal for the freedom of Ireland out- 
ran the slow-footed prudence of older politicians and 
clerical conservatism. In this critical time he never 
swerved in his loyalty to the Church of his Fathers. 
He was a splendid illustration of the kinship that 
exists between patriotism and religion, and showed 



MEETING IN TEEMONT TEMPLE 25 

that love of Holy Church and love of country can go 
hand in hand. 

It is no wonder that, with these common sources 
of feeling and bonds of sympathy, we should have 
become bosom friends as soon as we met and knew 
each other in this country. I used to think that 
O'Reilly had a special affection for me. Hundreds 
of other friends of his, I have no doubt, flattered 
themselves with the same notion; nor were they far 
wrong. O'Reilly was quick to discern whatever was 
good in the characteristics of each, and honored it with 
a corresponding regard. If not a king among men, he 
had some royal prerogatives, and one of these was the 
faculty of making each of his friends feel that he held 
him in special affection. 

These qualities in our friend were the source of that 
influence that enabled him to render such valuable ser- 
vices to his country and his church. He was a con- 
servative force in Irish political agitations, and on 
more than one occasion he reconciled warring factions 
at critical junctures in the Land League and Home 
Rule movements. He was a bond of union, harmo- 
nizing conflicting policies. 

He was a Roman Catholic in religion. He was 
Catholic in faith, because he gave the assent of his 
will to all the truths of religion made known to him 
by reason, revelation, and the teaching of the church 
which he knew was founded by Christ. He was a 
Roman Catholic, because he accepted the Bishop of 



26 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

Rome as the divinely ordained head of that Church, 
and the ultimate judge in all disputed questions of 
faith or morals. 

He knew the limits of human intelligence, and the 
fallibility of reason in the domain of religion, and was 
content to rest his faith on well-authenticated revela- 
tion, made through divinely appointed channels. His 
mind was too sane to rebel against these limitations, 
and too pious to blame the Creator for not making 
man perfect. Hence, he was free from that intellect- 
ual pride and self-sufficiency which impel some men 
to try to hew out for themselves a pathway in the 
mysterious regions of religion, and to invent a way 
of salvation all their own. 

His open profession of faith in the Catholic relig- 
ion was of great service to the church in this coun- 
try. It showed once more what has so often been 
demonstrated, that great mental endowments and in- 
tellectual freedom are not incompatible with Catholic 
faith. The integrity of his life and character, moulded 
and sustained as they were by the moral precepts of 
the Catholic religion, helped in some measure to break 
down that dead wall of prejudice that unhappily 
divides Catholics from their fellow-citizens of other 
creeds. Without being learned in scholastic theol- 
ogy, he had a thorough knowledge of the substance 
of sound doctrine. He had the faculty of discerning 
the true and detecting the false in matters of doctrine, 
which is almost an instinct in those born and bred in 



MEETING IN TREMONT TEMPLE. 27 

the Catholic Church. He devoted many of the solitary 
hours of his prison life to studying Catholic doctrine. 

He was a prudent and able defender of the Church. 
In his own way, and by methods open to every intelli- 
gent layman, he vindicated the claims of the Catholic 
Church to the loyal adhesion of her own children, and 
the respectful attention and thoughtful consideration 
of those beyond her fold. By availing himself of her 
sacraments, regularly attending divine worship in her 
churches, and profiting by her ministration of the 
Divine Word, he strengthened his own faith, kept 
the integrity of his moral character intact, and set 
a beautiful and powerful example. 

On suitable occasions he explained to honest in- 
quirers, and to the public at large, true doctrines of 
the Catholic Church, and cleared them from the false 
coloring sometimes given to them by ignorance or 
malice. He never courted conflict or wantonly pro- 
voked attack. 

He was eminently a man of peace, and heartily de- 
tested all sectarian strife. When duty involved him 
in the irrepressible conflict between the Catholic 
Church and the sects, he faced the enemy with 
courage, and fought out the good fight with vigor 
and skill. 

In controversy he was an honorable antagonist. 
He never delivered a foul blow or struck a fallen foe. 
lie carried into the arena the noble manliness of 
the Greek athlete, and the Christian chivalry of the 



28 MEMORIAL OE JOHJST BOYLE O'REILLY. 

mediaeval knight. If his adversary was so ignoble 
as to resort to means unworthy of honorable warfare, 
he withdrew from the field, preferring to be accounted 
vanquished rather than be defiled by contact with 
anything that was base or vile. As soon as a con- 
troversy became a vehicle for bitter recrimination or 
personal abuse he excluded it from the columns of 
" The Pilot," which he edited with such ability and 
success. 

He preferred to loot at the bright side of things 
and the good that is in every man, and thus kept his 
soul at peace with all men, his temper sweet, and his 
mind serene. He saw and sung what was good in 
the Pilgrim of Plymouth Rock, the Puritan of Salem, 
the Virginia planter, and the Maryland colonist. He 
was singularly clear-sighted in the discernment of 
character, and hence the friends that he took into his 
confidence were always worthy of him, and remained 
loyal to the end. During his American career he was 
a potent force in Irish politics, one of the earliest pro- 
moters of the Land League agitation, a steady friend 
of the Home Rule movement, and a firm believer in 
the ultimate success of the Parnell Parliamentary 
Party. 

He loved America and her institutions, but his 
heart was in Ireland. In spite of his bright prospects 
in this country, he told me some years ago that 
the dearest wish of his heart was to return to his 
native place by the River Boyne, and there edit a 



MEETING LN TREMONT TEMPLE. 29 

journal that would wield a powerful influence in 
shaping - the future of Ireland and contributing to 
her prosperity. 

I am proud to be numbered among his friends, and 
much pleased to assist at this memorial meeting. 

I am glad of the privilege of being allowed to pay 
this slight tribute to .his worth, and to do honor to his 
memory. Now that he is lost to us, Ave begin more 
fully to realize what a space he filled in our lives and 
in the community, and what a valuable treasure he 
was. His influence will long remain among us active 
for good. The charitable institutions he helped to 
found or foster will remain memorials of his goodness 
of heart and his love of humanity. 

As a man we esteemed him; as a fellow-Catholic we 
are proud of him; as a patriot we applaud him; as a 
poet we admire him ; but as a friend we love him. 

REMARKS OF COL. CHARLES H. TAYLOR. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have 
come here to-night as a journalist to pay my tribute 
to the memory of one who was a strong man in my 
profession in the good old city of Boston. I wish 
that I had the eloquence possessed by so many men 
of his race, that, with all the grace and dignity and 
fire of oratory, I might say what I feel and tell what 
I knew and appreciated in John Boyle O'Reilly. As 
orators, however, are born and not made, and I am 



30 MEMOEIAL OF JOHN" BOYLE O'REILLT. 

not of them, I can but do my part in this magnificent 
demonstration by a brief, simple talk, none the less 
heartfelt because I cannot express myself as the 
occasion demands. I hope to be able, however, to 
contribute a thought or two to this grand testimonial 
to a citizen of Boston, for it is one which has rarely 
been equalled, and never surpassed in my recollec- 
tion. 

As you are well aware, men go forward in groups 
in a community, and twenty years ago I was among 
a large number of ambitious and industrious young 
men who were just beginning the battle of life in 
this city. Some of these young men were in the 
ministry, some in law, some in medicine, some in 
journalism, some in business, some in mechanics — 
all endeavoring to get on in life as best they 
could. 

Most of them were sons of workingmen. They 
were proud of that fact then, and those of them 
especially who have had any success are prouder still 
of it to-night. I say this emphatically; for if thei'e 
is a proud moment in the life of a man who starts 
from a humble home and makes a winning fight, it 
is when he lays his laurels at the feet of his dear old 
father; or, better yet, in the lap of his dear old 
mother, whose care and prayers were perhaps all she 
had to give him, if perchance, before success is fully 
assured, the forget-me-nots are blossoming above that 
mother's grave, the hope that perhaps in the spirit- 



MEETIXG EST TREMOXT TEMPLE. 31 

land she can realize that her care and prayers were 
not in vain, gives a thrill of joy and satisfaction 
which no earthly success can ever equal. 

How well do I remember the bright, fresh-faced 
young man who came among us twenty years ago, 
made his entry into Boston journalism, and joined the 
group of which I have spoken. Need I tell you how 
welcome he was then, or how with his joyoiis and 
buoyant nature and his contagious helpfulness he 
cheered on every one of the group during the twenty 
years he Avas with us. It is hardly necessary ; you 
who knew him so well need not be told what a 
delightful comrade he was, or what an inspiration he 
proved at times to the weary and the heavy-laden, 
when the battle seemed well-nigh hopeless. Many of 
those young men have made signal triumphs in 
different lines of work, and some of them are here 
to-night. It seems to me, however, that, in a large 
and broad sense, of all the group, John Boyle 
O'Reilly made the most conspicuous and gratifying 
success, especially from a journalistic and literary 
point of view. 

And this was true. When some men succeed, 
others with a like measure of prosperity, or with a 
little more or a little less, are frequently jealous when 
one of their number stands out prominently, even 
when the achievement is deserving. No man was 
ever jealous of John Boyle O'Reilly. On the con- 
trary, all were delighted with the position attained 



32 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'RELLLY. 

by this large-hearted, generous soul — this manly 
man among manly men. 

It has been said that he died too young. How 
true that seems to us, and how it proves that death 
loves a shining mark. How many times upon the 
battlefield and in our every-day life at home death 
has called for the best, when it has seemed to us 
Ave could have named others who might have been 
better spared. 

I once stood by the bier of a friend of mine who 
died at exactly the age at which John Boyle O'Reilly 
left us. The clergyman told us that the man died 
of overwork. In a limited sense he was right ; in a 
broader view he was radically Avrong. 

One of the most curious things to me in human 
nature is to notice the way in which men wake up at 
maturity and show the qualities with which they are 
endowed. From out of the ranks of many thou- 
sands of men of ordinary capacity comes a rare man. 
He has ambition, industry, application, persistency, 
genius. He seems to carry two hundred pounds of 
steam where the ordinary man has one pound. He 
works day and night with a force and with an 
impulse Avhich the ordinary man never feels, never 
realizes, and can scarcely comprehend. He knows 
he is working too hard, and that he cannot last; but 
he can no more halt than the water can cease to 
flow over the Falls of Niagara. The pages of 
history, all through the ages, are dotted with achieve- 



MEETING IN TREMONT TEMPLE. -V-'> 

meats of men of his class. They cannot stop if they 
would; they would not if they could. Why it is, 
no man can determine; and we can only believe that 
God in his infinite wisdom has designed that every 
man must work out his destiny with the ability and 
with the impetus which he finds in his sonl. 

John Boyle O'Reilly was one of those rare, ambi- 
tious, active, industrious, zealous, enthusiastic men 
who had a great deal of work to do in this world. 
He forged ahead at a pace which seemed to indicate 
that he realized that he was not to have a long life 
in which to accomplish it. We say that he died 
under fifty. When we consider how he worked for 
his native land, how he toiled in journalism and in 
literature, how he upheld his church, and how much 
time and labor he spent in helping the thousands 
A\ r ho came across his path, do we not know that he 
performed the work which many an able man could 
not have accomplished in threescore years and ten? 
We all realize it without the necessity of an argu- 
ment. We know also that few men have done so 
much in the seventy years which mark the orthodox 
limits of human endeavor, as he performed in his 
brief existence, and thus fulfilled his destiny. 

John Boyle O'Reilly's faults were few, his virtues 
many. He did his work fearlessly and brilliantly. 
He did it, too, with a conspicuous ability which was 
seen and appreciated by men of all classes and men of 
all creeds. He has gone from among us, but he lias 



34 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

left a record which the land of his nativity, his 
adopted country, and the city in which he lived 
will always cherish with pride, with honor, and with 
respect. 

The Chairman". — Colonel Taylor was right. John 
Boyle O'Reilly was one of the hardest- working men 
in the country, and even his recreation and pleasures 
were those of physical exertion. We have here to- 
night the hardest-working man in New England for 
the past forty-five years, and I want you to take light 
from Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. 

REMARKS OF GEN. BENJAMIN E. BUTLER. 

Mr. Chairman: A perusal of the public journals 
for the past few days will show greater honors paid to 
John Boyle O'Reilly in the shape of memorial meet- 
ings like this grand one, and smaller meetings, where 
fewer people could be called together, than will be 
found in any other same period of time following the 
death of any President of the United States since 
Washington. 

With such a record, why, then, need we come here 
to eulogize him, to speak well of him. His whole life 
was a eulogy to his character, his conduct, his bravery, 
and success. I can add nothing to what has been so 
well said of him in every relation of life. 

His reverend pastor has told you that he was a 



MEETING IX TKEMONT TEMPLE. 35 

many-sided man. From my knowledge of him that 
is very true. He might have had a side that his pas- 
tor did not know, because we are somewhat apt to 
conceal that side from the clergyman, and that side is 
the bad side. 

But, my friends, that side is always shown to the 
lawyer. If a man has that side, some lawyer knows 
it. That lawyer is his most confidential friend, in 
whom he can confide next after his wife, and before 
his clergyman. 

Xow I, for more than twenty years, have maintained 
that relation with John Boyle O'Reilly. A most un- 
profitable client, for he has never had a lawsuit or a 
contention. And therefore I know that however 
many sides he had, they were all great and good. 
And I add my testimony in that regard. 

He had one weakness, which was a very uncomfort- 
able one to him, and that was, he could not hear a tale 
of woe or misfortune that he did not set himself about 
rectifying or relieving it. He could never resist, not 
only an appeal when made to him, but the most casual 
information of wrong done, and especially of wrong 
done to the poor and unprotected. And many of his 
visits to me were not for himself, but in behalf of 
others whom he thought I might aid, being carried on 
by the thrilling and fervent and thorough elocpience of 
an orator, who could set forth their cause well when 
the aggrieved party would fail. Many and many a 
time has he come into my office t<> tell me about some 



36 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

poor man or wronged woman, and I would say to 
him : — 

" Well, what are they to you? " 

"No more than they are to you, sir; but if you 
had heard them as I have heard them you could not 
help it." 

That was the beautiful side of his character, which 
attracted me to him from the first; and we grew 
stronger and stronger in the bonds of affection and 
friendship, certainly on my part, as the other sides of 
his character presented themselves to me, and I could 
learn from him, as one side and the other came out 
toward me, how much there was in the man. And 
when the sad news of his early taking off came to me, 
no greater grief, save only the death of those nearest 
and clearest to me, has ever struck my heart. 

All agree that he was a patriot to his native land, 
ready to give, and who did give, the highest sac- 
rifices. All agree that to the land of his adoption 
he has given the best talent of his life. And if there 
was any drawback from that, it was, I have thought, 
that he was so in hopes that America should succeed, 
and thus save Ireland, that he was a little Irish in that 
as well as in everything else. 

Of his genius as a poet, drawing' from the very heart 
for inspiration, all men that have read what has been 
written of verse in the last twenty years know. That 
he was a natural orator in a very high degree is very 
easily expressed by saying that he was an educated 



MEETING LN TREMOXT TEMPLE. M 

Irishman. And it came to him by inheritance. But 
whoever had heard him on the platform knows it by 
experience. 

That he was a statesman capable of living' down, in 
the conservatism of after years, the enthusiasm and 
over-zeal of his younger career, and giving the highest 
and best and worthiest and most potent advice to his 
countrymen how Ireland could be saved, has been 
eloquently described by his pastor, and I need only to 
allude to it. 

As a historian, when he chose to tell a tale 
upon any subject, and especially on the subject 
I have last mentioned, no more eloquent words, 
glowing with truthful fervor, can be found on any 
page. 

Of his character as a Christian, everybody under- 
stood and knew what the reverend gentleman has 
told you. 

Of his domestic life we know, because he was a 
complete man; and he had just what he had, and 
loved what he received, — the care and tenderness 
and affection of a loving, devoted wife, and the hap- 
piness, only to be known to a father, of intelligent 
and beautiful children. 

My friend who has just addressed you, tells you 
that he achieved this in twenty years. Yes, that is 
true. And that he had worked over-hard, some 
people think. I don't think so, because no too hard- 
worked man could be as genial, as pleasant, anil 



38 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE o'KEILLY. 

bright at all times and under all circumstances, 
when not suffering from some specific illness, as 
John Boyle O'Reilly. A man who could take his 
canoe and paddle it from the head of the Connecti- 
cut river into Long Island sound was able to do 
all the work he needed and ought to. The man 
that swam the angry ocean for miles to get his 
liberty was a man that could not be overworked on 
God's footstool. 

But accident has taken him from us, and left us 
to think whether a man who achieves so much in 
the twenty years, — which time it takes a well-edu- 
cated lawyer in England to get his first case, — what 
would he not have done if he had been left to us? 
What would not Ireland have received of counsel 
and advice? What would England receive of 
stern rebuke and the finding out of her errors? 
For what would America in her politics not have 
been indebted; what would history and song and 
story not have gained, if John Boyle O'Reilly could 
have lived on with us to the age of Gladstone 
the statesman, Bancroft the historian, or the poets, 
our own poet, and the poet Tennyson? 

Twenty years multiplied in ever-increasing pro- 
portion by twenty years more, and twenty years 
more, and a fraction, and what would not John 
Boyle O'Reilly, if God had spared him to us, 
have achieved for his country, his adopted country, 
and for the world? 



MEETING IN TREMOXT TEMPLE. 39 

REMARKS OF COL. THOMAS W. HIGGIXSON. 

Mr. Chairman: You struck the keynote of the 
evening in describing the mission of our friend 
Boyle CReilly, as first and chiefly a mission of love 
and reconciliation. That, after all, was the strong 
point of this strong man's career. 

Standing here as I do, one of various speakers, 
representing widely different positions in religion 
and politics and nationality, it seems to me that I 
have never been at a similar gathering where the 
speakers were so welded into sympathy by the 
quality of one man's mind. It is the thing which 
has given him his influence and usefulness here, 
and made him a reconciler between different races 
and different religions. It is a rare gift among us. 

In the case of Boyle O'Reilly, attractiveness was 
a weak word for that charming personality which 
made itself felt by all who came near him, and 
which caused his fellow-members of the Papyrus 
Club — a collection of gentlemen who, being mostly 
journalists and literary men, are as little liable to 
compliment one another as any set I know — to 
declare in their funeral resolutions that he, their 
first president, was the best beloved of all their 
members. 

That Avas the quality which made him peculiarly 
fitted to do his share in a work so momentous for 
Boston, so momentous for America, so momentous 



40 MEMOPtlAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

for the world, that it might well make a man will- 
ing to die before he is fifty, if he could contribute 
but a little towards accomplishing it, — the recon- 
ciliation in this community between the Roman 
Catholic Irishman and the Protestant American. 

That was the mission that Boyle O'Reilly seemed 
just as distinctly sent among us to do, as if he had 
been born with that mission stamped upon his fore- 
head, and as if a hundred vicar-generals had anointed 
and ordained him for the work. 

And in doing this work he showed not merely 
the lovableness of his temperament, but its far- 
sightedness. He knew that unless that work could 
be done, our city and our State and our country 
are confessed failures. He knew that American 
civilization was a failure if it was only large enough 
to furnish a safe and convenient shelter for the 
descendants of Puritans and Anglo-Saxons, leaving 
Irishmen and Catholics outside. 

In doing that work he became our teacher. Him- 
self a self-liberated convict, he set us free. Himself 
a faithful advocate of a great and powerful religion, 
he taught a standard of religious toleration such as 
many a Protestant has yet to learn. 

Why, even here in Tremont Temple, they have 
not always got up to the level of that. And when 
he came to speak at Plymouth, or to speak of Wendell 
Phillips, he showed himself an American of the Ameri- 
cans in sympathy. He saw points in our history and 



MEETING EST TREMONT TEMPLE. 41 

in our moral antecedents which the American his- 
torian might well learn from him to appreciate. 

As a literary man, I should speak of his liter- 
ature, lie showed his strength, on the one side, 
in that, and on another side, his fineness and his ten- 
derness. In his poetry, the metre that came most 
congenial to him is that which might be called 
almost emphatically the Irish metre — the long, 
swinging measure of the magnificent ballad of 
" Fontenoy," the metre that makes superb the 
series of glorious pictures in Sir Samuel Ferguson's 
" Forging of the Anchor." That metre he handled, 
and he gave a new strength to it. But it was not 
his only side. 

And I remember hearing him once, and some 
of my fellow-members of the Papyrus Club here 
on the platform will recall his reading to us once, 
on one of the ladies' nights celebrated by that 
literary club, a poem of five verses, called "Love's 
Secret," — verses so exquisite in tone, touching witli 
such pathetic poetry the very heart and core of 
the deepest tie that binds man to woman, that 
there is many a poet of America and England, 
whose verses fill the newspapers and magazines, 
who might well give all his fame if the author- 
ship of these five verses could be transferred to 
him. 

That was the combination that gave the charm 
to Boyle O'Eeilly. 



42 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

It sometimes seemed as if centuries of oppres- 
sion, generations of protest against tyranny, were 
concentrated into a single burning paragraph that 
came from his pen. But then at other times, 
reading several numbers in succession, looking 
behind the surface, I could see the truth of what 
has been said here to-night, — that his influence 
on the cause of Ireland was, as everywhere else, 
a reconciling influence, — that he, at least, was 
conservative among radicals, and that the excesses 
and extremes that have occurred, and that we all 
deplore, would have been greater than they were, 
but for the influence of that well-considered and 
reasonable pen. 

I am not one of those who can criticise a man 
who was so good an American for being not 
merely incidentally and occasionally, but steadily 
and underneath it all, an Irishman also. 

I never have been among those who believed 
it to be the duty of an Irishman, as soon as he 
set foot on this soil and looted around for his 
naturalization papers, to forget the wrongs and 
sorrows he had left behind him. 

I cannot complain of Boyle O'Reilly, that through 
life in his spirit he kept the green flag waving 
beside the Stars and Stripes, any more than I 
can forget the recorded joy of McClellan in the 
terrible battles of the Peninsula, when he saw the 
green flags borne by each regiment in Meagher's 



MEETING IN TKEMONT TEMPLE. 43 

Irish Brigade come from the Second Army Corps 
to his relief. 

In some ways Boyle O'Eeilly was not enough 
of a reformer for me. I never could quite forgive 
him for not being like my friend and his asso- 
ciate, Colonel Taylor, a strong advocate of woman 
suffrage. But I can tell you that when the man 
who is doing two men's work all day still spends 
night after night in attending the invalid wife to 
whom he owes so much, and when, in making his 
last will, he has the courage and the justice to 
leave that wife the undisturbed possession of all 
his property and the executrix of his will, I am 
ready to sign an amnesty with him on the woman 
suffrage question. 

And on other questions that lie before us in 
the future — on the questions that are gathering 
behind all the present questions and that bid fair 
to give the next generation a harder problem, 
much harder to solve than the mere question of 
slavery, Boyle O'Reilly is lost at the beginning of 
a contest where his fire and his judgment will 
greatly be regretted. 

It is not for nothing that, as the last genera- 
tion grew tq) reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," so this generation grows 
up reading Edward Bellamy and listening to Henry 
George, and wondering where it is all to end. 

We none of us know where it is to end. We 



44 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'EEILLY. 

none of us know even how to state the new prob- 
lems of the future. But we know that in these 
problems O'Reilly with his heart and his head, 
with his power of reconciliation not merely between 
different races and different religions, but between 
rich and poor, between learned and ignorant — 
we know what an influence he might have exerted, 
and we can deplore that. 

But most of all we know this, that up to this 
time, and during these last ten years, as the poet 
Lowell said in his great " Commemoration Ode," 
that Abraham Lincoln had abolished all the old 
distinction between Puritan and Cavalier, so Boyle 
O'Reilly has done more than one man's work to 
abolish the old distinction between English- American 
and Irish-American. And let us do our part in his 
memory to keep it abolished henceforth. 

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT E. H. CAPEN. 

Ladles and Gentlemen: I count it a rare 
privilege, a high honor, to take part in this mag- 
nificent demonstration and bear my tribute, though 
a humble one, to the memory of our distinguished 
and ever to be lamented friend. 

It is true that we cannot just yet find him his 
just place in letters; we have not sufficient per- 
spective for that. It has taken two hundred and 
fifty years to assign Shakespeare his proper place. 



MEETING IN TEEMONT TEMPLE. 45 

But there are some qualities which need no 
perspective, — the quality of friendship, that subtile 
grace which binds kindred soids together, which 
betrays itself in the grasp of the hand, the glance 
of the eye, the intonations of the voice, and those 
unselfish deeds which friendship prompts. We 
cannot be too near that to appreciate it; the true 
friendship may grow firm in the memory, and 
become more sacred with time. And it is one of 
those things that the nearer we are to it the 
more we feel it is a living power. And no man 
in this present time has had more of these quali- 
ties which bind men together, which draw faith and 
impetus of those who are kindred minds, than he. 

There are other qualities which can be imme- 
diately appreciated; for example, patriotism, that 
subtile sentiment which leads a man to feel that 
the spot on which he was born is the most 
precious spot of earth that is, which induces him 
to forget everything, and to give all that he has, 
even life itself, for the defence of kindred and 
home. 

This quality our friend had, and it was his 
devotion to his native land that made him first 
famous throughout the world and secured for him 
a memorial, if it had done nothing else; and 
what is most striking and rare, the patriotism he 
had for Ireland, he also gave to the land that 
furnished him an asylum. 



46 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

He loved Ireland as the greatest of his country- 
men have loved it; but he loved America as well, 
and would have given the last drop of blood of 
his veins for America as cheerfully as for Ireland, 
if thereby he could have enhanced its glory. For 
a quality like this, nations have reared the proudest 
memorials to their sons, and given them the most 
glorious pages in their history; yet there are 
those who say that patriotism is a narrow virtue, 
that it fences off nations, breeds animosity between 
races, that you must not do anything to foster 
it, that future glory is a mere vanity, and that 
we must all put ourselves on the higher plane of 
humanity. 

While I am a humanitarian, I do not believe in 
that doctrine. I believe that a sentiment engen- 
dered in human nature was planted there by God, 
is commendable, and to be fostered everywhere 
and on all occasions. 

At all events, our friend did not hold his 
patriotism in any narrow fashion. 

He was an Irishman with all the traditions, 
with all the wrongs of his country burned into 
his soul, and yet he had the grace to do justice 
to the grand achievements of Englishmen. He 
was an American citizen, not merely because he 
saw the possibility of the realization here of the 
dreams of his youth, the hopes and convictions 
of his maturer manhood, because, as some one has 



MEETING IN TREMOXT TEMPLE. 47 

said, be saw that here Ireland might receive its 
emancipation, but because he saw in our institu- 
tions the type and the possibility of the realiza- 
tion of the great truth that God has made of 
one blood all nations of men to dwell on the 
face of the earth. 

He Avas more than a patriot, because wherever 
he saw humanity oppressed he saw a brother in 
woe, and determined to give voice to the wrong. 
Nay, he could rise not only above the preju- 
dices of his race and the traditions of his nation, 
but above even the scruples of his religion, and 
that is the hardest thing for man to accomplish 
in this world. 

This man, a Roman Catholic, on New England 
soil, in daily association with the sons of Puritans, 
— the sons of men who hated the Papacy as the 
instrument of Satan, and whose descendants have 
hot entirely got beyond the narrowness of their 
forefathers, — could yet describe in fitting terms, 
and show the appreciation of his mind and soul for 
the achievements of the founders of New England. 

So that it is not only Ireland and America 
that may mourn his death, it is humanity, civiliza- 
tion, our common Christianity. 

What honor shall we . pay to such a man? It 
will be honor enough, I doubt not, if we can 
take all the virtues and all the achievements of 
his life into our own souls. 



48 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

One week ago this very night I heheld a 
spectacle such as is rarely given to mortal man 
to behold. Standing on the piazza of my cottage 
by the sea, I looked out upon the waters of the 
bay. The moon, almost full, hung midway in the 
sky, and shining over the island that stood at 
the mouth of the bay, and shot out great rays 
of light, flashing like a giant's scymitar, as if to 
guard the entrance to the bay. The rays of the 
moon reflected in the water made it a pathway 
of light, reaching from the horizon almost to my 
very feet, seeming like a pathway for the foot- 
steps of the angels as they go about on their 
noiseless errands among men. On the other side 
the waves sparkled and looked as if the Almighty 
were casting jewels into the sea. 

As I listened to the wavelets breaking on the 
shore, it reminded me of the music of the silver 
bells, while over the hills from the great reefs that 
lay beyond came the ceaseless roar of the ocean 
surge. On every breath of the wind was wafted 
the odor of the sea, mingled with the balm of the 
spruce and the fir. 

As I stood and took it in with all my senses, I 
thought that it was not unlike our lamented friend. 
For his faculties always flashed out light that 
glistened like rubies, revealing and defending the 
truth at once. 

The brilliancy of his mind illuminated every subject 



MEETING EN TREMOXT TEMPLE. 49 

that came within the circle of his thought, reminded 
one of a strength as fathomless and as resistless as 
the sea, and there was in him so much of true 
humanity that we could not come into his presence 
without being affected as by a tonic. 

The mystery of taking him we cannot fathom; 
we can only trust in the wisdom of the Power that 
guides and rules. But there is this which we may 
say, that when the sons of the Pilgrims and the 
sons of Irishmen, in that time now at hand, emi- 
grants walking shoulder to shoulder, shall join hands 
together to rear a more perfect civilization than the 
world has yet seen; when the descendants, if you 
please, of Cromwell's soldiers, in goodly intercourse 
with the sons of those who were their victims, shall 
march together towards the realization of the high- 
est and noblest system of humanity; when Protestant 
and Catholic shall join with each other in producing 
a type of Christianity more gracious, more beauti- 
ful, more pure than any that has yet been expe- 
rienced, bringing the life of our Divine Lord and 
Master nearer to the hearts of men than it has ever 
yet been, — this man shall have his proper place, this 
man will be recognized as a prophet and a seer, as 
the very instrument of God in bringing about the 
glorious consummation. 

Let the nation mourn him, let it raise the lamenta- 
tion in one shout together, let New England sing 
his requiem; nay, let Boston, the only truly exclusive 



50 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE o'KEILLY. 

city on the American continent, the only city that 
has traditions which she may guard with religious 
jealousy, make room amongst the vaults of her 
most distinguished sons for the dust of this, her 
adopted son, who entered as fully into her life as 
any of those in whom her own blood flowed, and 
who was in sympathy a true Bostonian; let her 
give him a niche worthy of his fame along with 
those who are allied with her history. 

REMARKS OF EDWIN G. WALKER. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Men 
that are oppressed, or denied the enjoyment of any 
of the rights that belong to them, are apt to feel, 
and most keenly, the hand of the Almighty when it 
falls on one who is not of their peculiar kind, if he 
was their friend and an outspoken defender of their 
rights; and so it was on that early Sabbath morn- 
ing when the Angel of Death visited the pleasant 
summer home of John Boyle O'Reilly, and softly 
whispered in his ear, " Your troubles are over and 
your triumph is complete." 

It is hardly to be thought that a people whose 
injuries he tried to have redressed, but who were 
still bowed down beneath the weight of wrongs, 
could understand at once that God doeth all things 
well; but after a little time spent in reflection, the 
fact did appear, and then they were j)repared to 



MEETING IN TKEMONT TEMPLE. 51 

join with those that met to honor the memory of him 
who, by his noble deeds, had won their love and 
respect. 

I come here to-night because John Boyle O'Reilly 
was the friend of my race, and for the purpose of 
joining with those who are present for the accom- 
plishment of something that will tend to perpetuate 
his memory. 

Some of us in America will never forget those 
who contended for the right when our people were 
being harassed by the use of the lash, the chain, 
the blood-hound, and the auction-block. 

Still, on the day when we were relieved from the 
forced acknowledgment that there was no law in 
this nation that forbade the doing of acts as vile 
as those I have just mentioned, we were immediately 
confronted by another ugly side of the thing, that 
had pursued us during all the time of our existence 
here. First to be noticed was the desperation that 
took possession of the former slaveholders when 
they realized they had lost the complete control of 
those who had too long and too quietly permitted 
themselves to be their bondmen. Next, we had to 
face the meanness of those in the country who were 
always ready and anxious to sustain and support 
the holding in slavery of the American black man. 
Then, again, there were the timid, those who did 
not believe in chattel slavery ; but they lacked the 
courage needed for its destruction, and the removal 



52 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE o'liEILLT. 

of the rubbish that its going out would leave. These 
three parts came together and made up the enemy 
that met us before the ink was dry that gave force 
to the Emancipation Proclamation. So we had, in- 
stead of actual chattel slavery, a state of things 
that called loudly on the veteran Abolitionists to 
retain their guns, and for new recruits to come in 
quick, in order to keep the army in a proper condi- 
tion to meet the foe that had been defeated, but 
not positively conquered. 

Early amongst those who responded to the call of 
Wendell Phillips and his faithful band was the young, 
vigorous, and. dashing John Boyle O'Reilly. He was 
quick to grapple with the many-headed monster that 
had been formed out of the debris that had been 
left to show that slavery once had a standing in 
this land. 

With his pen, John Boyle O'Reilly sent through 
the columns of a newspaper that he edited in this city, 
words in our behalf that were Christian, and anathe- 
mas that were just. j!^ot only that, but he went on 
to the platform, and in bold and defiant language he 
denounced the murderers of our people and advised us 
to strike the tyrants back. It was at a time when the 
cloud was most heavy and more threatening than at 
any other period since reconstruction. At that time 
our Wendell Phillips was stricken by the hand of 
death, and then it was that some doubted that they 
would ever be able to see a clear sky. But in the 



MEETING UST TKEMONT TEMPLE. 53 

midst of all the gloom we could hear Mr. O'Reilly 
declaring his determination to stand by the colored 
American in all contests where his rights were at 
stake. 

The loss of Mr. Phillips was a severe blow to my 
race in this country; but as long as Mr. O'Reilly lived 
and spoke, we felt that we had at least outside of our 
own people one true, vigilant, brave, and self-sacrific- 
ing friend, who, like Mr. Phillips, claimed for us just 
what he claimed for himself. 

In the little time that I have been standing here, I 
have talked to you about John Boyle O'Reilly from 
the standpoint of one who belongs to a race not yet 
delivered from the clutch of the oppressor. 

Mr. O'Reilly tried, and did help us to reach a 
place fiir in advance of the one that we occupied 
when he espoused our cause. If I have seemed 
to dismiss all else, and only spoken of him in con- 
nection Avith the grand things which he did for 
my people, I know that you will not find fault 
with me. I remember that from his youthful days 
up to the close of that quiet and solemn moment 
when his soul was borne on in the arms of his 
Saviour to its peaceful and eternal rest, he never 
permitted an opportunity to pass him when he could 
strike a blow for the people in his native island, nor 
did his great heart ever fail to beat for the down- 
trodden of all mankind. 



54 MEMORIAL, OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

REMARKS OF HON. PATRICK A. COLLINS. 

"For Lycidas is dead ere his prime, 
. . . and has not left a peer." 

Even in this solemn hour of public mourning it 
seems hard to realize that we shall see him no more. 
Men who knew us both will expect from me no eulogy 
of Boyle O'Reilly. You mourn the journalist, the 
orator, the poet, the patriot of two peoples, the strong, 
tender, true, and knightly character. I mourn with 
you, and I also mourn — alone. 

But, after all, the dead speak for themselves. ]STo 
friend in prose or verse can add a cubit to his stature. 
IsTo foe, however mendacious, can lessen his fame or 
the love humanity bears him. 

Yet we owe, not to him, but to the living and to the 
future, these manifold expressions of regard — these 
estimates of his worth. The feverish age needs 
always teaching. 

Here was a branded outcast some twenty years ago, 
stranded in a strange land, friendless and penniless; 
to-day wept for all over the world where men are 
free or seeking to be free, for his large heart went 
out to all in trouble, and his soul was the soul of a 
freeman; all he had he gave to humanity, and asked 
no return. 

Take the lesson of his life to your hearts, young 
men; you who are scrambling and wrangling for 
petty dignities and small honors. This man held no 



MEETING IX TKEMONT TEMPLE. 55 

office and had no title. The man was larger than any 
office, and no title could ennoble him. He was born 
without an atom of prejudice, and he lived and died 
without an evil or ungenerous thought. 

He was Irish and American; intensely both, but 
more than both. The world was his country, and 
mankind was his kin. Often he struck; but he always 
struck power, never the helpless. He seemed to feel 
with the dying regicide in "Les Miserables," "I weep 
with you for the son of the king, murdered in the tem- 
ple; but weep with me for the children of the people 
— they have suffered longest." 

Numbered and marked and branded; officially 
called rebel, traitor, convict, and felon, wherever 
the red flag floats ; denied the sad privilege of 
kneeling on the grave of his mother — thus died 
this superb citizen of the great Republic. 

But his soul was always free — vain are all mortal 
interdicts. 

By the banks of that lovely river, where the blood of 
four nations once commingled, in sight of the monu- 
ment to the alien victor, hard by the great mysterious 
Rath, over one sanctified spot dearer than all others to 
him, where the dew glistened on the softest green, the 
spirit of O'Reilly hovered, and shook the stillness of 
the Irish dawn on its journey to the stars. 

Hexrv M. Eogers, Esq., then introduced the following 
Resolutions in memory of John Boyle O'Reilly: — 



56 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

The citizens of Boston, in tender memory of their 
fellow-citizen, John Boyle O'Reilly, and in recogni- 
tion of the loss they have sustained, have assembled 
on this second day of September, 1890, to give 
expression to their appreciation of his character. 

They are grateful, first of all, that he was their 
fellow-citizen ; that he was one with them in thought 
and feeling; that he strove with them for the welfare 
and prosperity of the city of Boston, which he loved 
as they love it. 

Holding no public office and wishing none, he exem- 
plified the influence of the good citizen who is earnest 
in well-doing, and who is animated only by the desire 
to serve his kind. 

His loss to this city will be felt in every good work, 
in every field of usefulness. 

While they recognize their loss of his association 
with them as a fellow-citizen and friend, they fully 
appreciate that he was a man of too wide sympathies 
and too generous humanity to be restricted within 
the limits of any city. 

As a patriot he had suffered for the country of his 
birth, and so lovers of liberty throughout the world 
hail him and claim him as their brother. 

As a poet he had sung songs that had won the 
hearts of men and turned their thoughts upward, 
always toward a higher reach for humanity; and the 
sick, the suffering, and the oppressed, the down- 
trodden and those who had grown faint-hearted, took 



MEETING IN TEEMONT TEMPLE. 57 

new life and new courage from his words, and to-day 
claim their brotherhood with him. 

As an orator who found his eloquence in his own 
heart, and who poured it out because of the deep well 
from which his inspiration was drawn, he is claimed by 
all champions of humanity, by all lovers of their kind. 

As a journalist, strong in his own convictions, yet 
recognizing that not what a man says, but what he is, 
is the true test, he grew nearer and nearer, as his years 
went on, to that broadest plane where duty to his God 
and to his fellow-man, and not pride of opinion nor 
pride of statement, takes the first place. His fellow- 
journalists saw this, and they, too, claim kindred with 
him. 

As a man he strove for humanity with earnest and 
unfaltering trust, believing that out of his manhood 
man's redemption under God would come. 

And so in the minds of his fellow-citizens he stands 
as the type of young, strong, vigorous manhood, an 
inspiration and an encouragement. 

"Wherever man recognizes manhood, wherever doubt 
and distrust come between man and his ideal, the en- 
thusiasm, the virility, the faith of John Boyle O'Reilly 
in his brother man may be remembered, and doubt and 
distrust will give way, and man everywhere lay claim 
to him. 

His fellow-citizens, in loving remembrance, bear tes- 
timony to his worth and record their admiration of his 
character. 



58 MEMORIAL OF JOHN" BOYLE O'REILLY. 

They tender to his widow and family their respectful 
sympathy, and ask that this memorial of him may be 
forwarded to them as an expression of the feelings of 
this meeting. 

On motion of Thomas J. Gargan, Esq., the following 
Eesolution was passed : — 

Resolved, That Col. Charles H. Taylor, president of 
the Press Club; Gen. Francis A. "Walker, president of 
the St. Botolph Club; Robert F. Clark, president 
of the Boston Athletic Association; James Jeffrey 
Roche, president of the Papyrus Club; Thomas B. 
Fitz, president of the Catholic Union; Gen. Michael 
T. Donohoe, president of the Charitable Irish Society; 
the Yery Rev. William Byrne, Arthur H. Dodd, 
Edgar Parker, Asa P. Potter, A. Shuman, Richard F. 
Tobin, Edward A. Mosely, Dr. James A. McDonald, 
Henry A. M'Glenen, Dr. Francis A. Harris, John J. 
Hayes, Hon. Patrick A. Collins, be appointed a com- 
mittee, with full powers, to receive all subscriptions 
that may be offered, and use the same in the erection 
of a public memorial, or memorials, in honor of the 
late John Boyle O'Reilly; said committee shall have 
power to add to their number and fill all vacancies. 



OUTLINE 



JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY'S LIFE. 



OUTLINE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY'S LIFE. 



John Boyle O'Reilly was born in Dowth Castle, 
County Meath, Ire., June 28, 1844. His father was 
"William David O'Reilly, principal of the JSTetterville 
Institution, at Drogheda, a fine scholar, especially 
strong in mathematics. His mother was Eliza Boyle, 
a woman of rarely beautiful character and brilliant 
mind. Her love for Ireland became in her son the 
ruling passion of his life. Her fine literary tastes 
grew in him to the height of genius. 

He received a good English education in his father's 
school, and at the age of fourteen went into the office 
of the " Drogheda Argus " as a type-setter. Later 
he became an expert short-hand writer, and found 
employment on several newspapers in England. 

He entered into the Fenian movement with charac- 
teristic ardor. He told the writer of this sketch that 
he never fully realized the movement until he found 
himself in prison for his share in it. '* They only said 
to us, * Come, boys, it's prison or death ; but it's for 
Ireland;' and we came." 

In riper years, he enlisted with all the force, fervor, 
and single-heartedness of his nature on the side of 



62 MEMORIAL OF JOHK BOYLE O'REILLY. 

constitutional agitation, and was unquestionably the 
greatest factor in making the American people a unit 
for Parnell and Irish Home Rule. 

In 1863 he returned to Ireland, and enlisted in the 
10th Hussars, where he spent three years, furthering 
the revolutionary cause and learning the art of war 
for future use. 

In 1866 he was arrested in Dublin on the secret 
evidence of an informer, tried before a special mili- 
tary commission, with Color-Sergeant McCarthy and 
the late Corporal Thomas Chambers, and on June 27, 
the eve of his twenty-second birthday, was convicted 
on five capital charges, and sentenced to death. Later 
the sentence was commuted, first to imprisonment for 
life, then to twenty years' penal servitude. He was 
imprisoned successively in the English prisons at 
Chatham, Portsmouth,. Portland, and Dartmoor. At 
this last he and his comrades reverently gathered 
and buried the bones of the French and American 
prisoners of the War of 1812, which the English 
authorities had left uncovered, after they had been 
uprooted from their shallow graves by the prison pigs. 
Over the grave they raised a humble slab bearing 
the motto: " Dolce et decorum est pro patria moriP 

In October, 1867, he was transported to the penal 
colony of Western Australia with sixty other political 
prisoners, among them Denis B. Cashman, now of 
Boston. In February, 1869, he escaped from the 
penal colony in a boat, assisted by the Rev. Patrick 



OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE. 63 

McCabe, a Catholic priest stationed in his district, 
and some other devoted Irish-Australians. He was 
picked up at sea, after many hardships ashore and 
afloat, by the American whaling bark " Gazelle," 
commanded by Captain David R. Gifford, of New 
Bedford, Mass., who treated him with the greatest 
kindness for the six months he remained on board, 
and who lent him twenty guineas, all the money he 
had with him, when they separated off the Cape of 
Good Hope. Captain Gifford put O'Reilly on board 
another American ship, the " Sapphire," of Boston, 
bound to Liverpool. This vessel carried him safely 
to England, where, by the aid of her Yankee offi- 
cers, he was shipped as an American sailor on board 
the " Bombay, " of Bath, Me., Captain Frank Jordan, 
which landed him in Philadelphia in November, 1869. 
He was twenty-five years of age, strong and hope- 
ful, but he did not know a soul in America. 

On the day that O'Reilly landed in Philadelphia, 
November 23, he made ajjplication for American cit- 
izenship, at the United States Court in that city. 
He made but a brief stay in Philadelphia, and also 
in New York, to which he next directed his steps. 
He arrived in Boston, January 2, 1870, accompanied 
the Fenian raid into Canada the same year, sending 
descriptive letters thereof to the Boston papers. In 
the summer of 1870 he secured editorial employment 
on "The Pilot;" and in his intervals of leisure be- 
gan to give to the world his poems, the outgrowth 



61 MEMORIAL OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 

of the observation and endurance of the crowded 
years of his short life. 

Horace Greeley was among the first to feel the 
original and striking presence that had come into the 
literary world, and some of O'Reilly's best narrative 
poems appeared in the " !N"ew York Tribune." 

The "Atlantic Monthly," Harper's, Scribner's, and 
others of the best American literary publications 
welcomed him to their pages. He was a valued con- 
tributor to the "Dai'k Blue," the magazine of the 
University of Oxford, till it found out that he was a 
Fenian and an ex-political convict. 

He married, on August 15, 1872, Miss Mary 
Murphy, of Charlestown. The fruit of this marriage 
was four beautiful young daughters, — Mollie, Bessie, 
Agnes, and Blanicl. Of his wife he wrote, dedicating 
to her his " Songs, Legends, and Ballads : " " Her 
rare and loving judgment has been a standard I 
have tried to re°.ch. " His last volume of poems, 
" In Bohemia," was dedicated " To My Four Little 
Daughters." 

In 1876 Mr. O'Reilly, already for some years 
editor of " The Pilot," became its proprietor, with 
Archbishop "Williams, of Boston. Under his direc- 
tion it became accounted a foremost exponent of 
Irish- American thought, and one of the stanchest 
and ablest defenders of Catholic interests. 

Mr. O'Reilly's poems are published in four vol- 
umes, as follows : " Songs of the Southern Seas," 



OUTLINE OF His LIFE. 05 

1873; "Songs, Legends, and Ballads," 1878; "Stat- 
ues in the Block," 1881; "In Bohemia;' 1886. His 
novel, "Moondyne," appeared in 18^0; his "Ath- 
letics and Manly Sport," in 1887. He edited many 
books and prefaced not a few, including among 
the latter George Makepeace Towle's "Young Peo- 
ple's History of Ireland," Justin McCarthy's "Ire- 
land's Cause and England's Parliament," and Mrs. 
J. Ellen Foster's " Crime against Ireland." He had 
several works in preparation; among them "'flic 
Country with a Poof," an allegory, illustrating the 
defects in the American social system; and a work 
on the material resources of Ireland. 

He Avas for many years past in great demand as a 
lecturer, and has been the chosen spokesman of the 
city of his home on several historic occasions. Per- 
haps the best of his orations is, " The Common Citi- 
zen Soldier," delivered in Boston on Memorial Day, 
1886. The oftenest in demand were his "Illustrious 
Irishmen of one Century," and "Irish Poetry and 
Song." 

Perhaps the best estimate of his literary genius is 
implied in the tact that he, for the past seven years, 
was called upon to write where Longfellow, or 
Whittier, or Holmes would have been chosen ere 
the infirmities of age made them shrink from the 
tasks involved. He ranked next to these beloved 
names in the popular heart of Xew England and 
America. Three of the greatest poems of the past 



66 MEMORIAL OF JOBGST BOYLE O'REILLY. 

decade, * Wendell Phillips," " Crispus Attucks," 
and "The Pilgrim Fathers," are John Boyle 
O'Reilly's. 

But in his poems of Ireland he touched, as was 
meet, the high-water mark of his genius. His " Exile 
of the Gael" is .the best tribute the English lan- 
guage has ever paid to the Irish race. Of the rest, 
his poetry is in the hearts of the people. 

He wrote, by invitation, the poem, "From the 
Heights," for the opening of the Catholic University 
at Washington, D.C., last ]STovember, which he also 
read, being the only layman, except the President 
of the United States and the Secretary of State, to 
speak before that magnificent assemblage. 

He had much work under way at the time of his 
death, — lectures outlined, poems half finished, works 
of benevolence pledged for the coining season. The 
last week of his life was the most crowded. He 
was on the reception committee for the Grand Army 
encampment in Boston; he was bringing out a 
Grand Army number of " The Pilot." He held his 
pen for the last time in the service of the country of 
his adoption, the country which he loved and served 
with a whole-hearted affection, and which held him 
in her heart among her noblest and best defenders. 
On Wednesday, August 6, one of the hottest days 
of the season, he umpired the Irish games at High- 
land Lake Grove. 

On Saturday, August 9, he spent the morning - in 



OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE. 67 

"The Pilot" office as usual, taking thought, in the 
midst of his work and care, for arrangements that 
all his employes might have good places for a view 
of the Grand Army of the Republic procession on 
Tuesday. He was apparently well, but evidently 
tired. He took an early boat to his summer resi- 
dence in Hull. He had been suffering for several 
nights from insomnia, and on Saturday night walked 
a long way with his brother-in-law, Mr. John R. 
Murphy, who had been spending the evening with 
him, in the hope that physical fatigue would induce 
the needed sleep. Next morning, Sunday, August 
10, the city and country were shocked by the news 
of his sudden death. 

The sad tidings caused national grief and con- 
sternation, for the death of John Boyle O'Reilly in 
the fulness of his powers and usefulness is one of 
those rare calamities against which the most mod- 
erate pen sets with full advertence the weighty word 
— irreparable. 












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